The March for Choice in Dublin, in 2015. This year’s event takes place on Saturday.
Photograph: Alamy

It is 34 years since the Irish people voted to amend the constitution to designate the right to life of the “unborn” as equal to that of a pregnant woman, effectively banning abortion. And for 34 years Irish feminists and their allies have been campaigning to end the shame and suffering that have been the fruits of our holy eighth amendment.

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In 2011 the Abortion Rights Campaign organised its first annual March for Choice in Dublin. The police told the media that only 500 people had attended, a figure easily contradicted by video evidence. The national press barely blinked at us. The following year the then taoiseach, Enda Kenny, told Time magazine that abortion was “not of priority” for his government. We were not on the radar.

Since 2011 marchers have demanded a referendum on the eighth amendment. Now we have one. The current taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, has announced a vote for May or June of next year. The question is – can we win?

Yet repealing the eighth is very far from a done deal. The marriage equality referendum had the support of every major Irish political party, with Kenny assuring the electorate that “there is nothing to fear for voting for love and equality”. In contrast, the repeal campaign is operating in an extremely hostile political environment.

Varadkar has long been on public record as “pro-life”. Though his stance softened somewhat during his tenure as health minister – and he now admits fatal foetal abnormality and risks to women’s health are justifications for abortion – he remains an unsympathetic figure to preside over the referendum.

The taoiseach has spuriously claimed that pro-choicers don’t understand what repealing the eighth amendment would entail. He refuses to acknowledge abortion as a class issue. He tends to respond to questions on abortion – a procedure that 92% of the time happens in the first trimester of pregnancy – by raising straw-man arguments about abortion on request up to birth, and he is fond of publicly reaffirming his belief in the rights of the unborn.

In short, while the wording of the referendum text has yet to be confirmed, I wouldn’t be surprised if our even-handed political representatives decide on: “Do you want to give murderous harlots the right to kill innocent children temporarily residing in their uteri, when any one of those unborn children could be a future Nobel laureate?” What’s certain is that Varadkar will not be rushing to assure the Irish electorate that there is nothing to fear from voting for women’s bodily autonomy.

The encouraging outcome of the citizens’ assembly should also be viewed critically. The assembly comprised 99 participants, chosen to represent the electorate demographically. Over a period of five months, they listened to a balanced series of experts. The assembly was widely regarded as a stalling tactic on the part of Kenny, who clearly didn’t want any more lady talk in parliament under his watch.

The outcome surprised the country, with 64% of the participants agreeing that abortion should be accessible without restriction up to 12 weeks’ gestation. This is widely out of sync with polls, where only 23% of the population agree that abortion should be available on request. Mary Laffoy, then a supreme court judge who presided over the assembly, has vehemently denied that participants were subjected to partial information. It seems that if you put 99 people in a room and expose them to expert testimony from various ideological camps, they will come out pro-choice.

This has given rise to some hope that the Irish middle ground will come to support best international medical practice. But I do not share this optimism. The electorate is not about to be educated in an objective manner on the science of foetal development or the philosophy of when life begins. Rather, it is about to be bombarded by emotive social media campaigns, campaigns that – as the tech journalist Gavin Sheridan points out – can potentially be funded to the tune of millions by foreign sources without regulation.

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A study of the 2016 US presidential election indicates that social media polarisation does not act equally on people to the left and right of the political spectrum. Conservatives consume less neutral or ideologically oppositional news than liberals, while liberals – more committed to journalistic standards and diverse viewpoints – read a comparatively balanced newsfeed. The end result skews right.

I am not trying to make discouraging doomsday pronouncements. I believe we can win, and will be working every spare second to ensure we do. But this is no time for complacency. In a hostile political and technological environment, the repeal movement needs intelligent strategising and brave campaigning to reach those whose minds are not yet set. We have our referendum, and that’s an achievement in itself. Now let’s realistically assess the challenges that face us, and win it.

• Emer O’Toole is assistant professor of Irish performance studies at Concordia University, in Canada, and author of Girls Will Be Girls